Darnell Dockett is one of the most influential athletes on Twitter

The Arizona Cardinals defensive end Darnell Dockett sure likes to tweet a lot. To date he's sent out over 10,000 of them. While some have gotten him in trouble, it looks like they're finally paying off. Kind of.

On Thursday Dockett was named by Ad.ly as one of the most influential athletes on Twitter. He shouldn't get overly excited though. According to PopEater.com, the list only includes athletes who are in the Ad.ly network.

The list is skewed by the fact that it contains only the athletes in the Ad.ly endorsement network, but it still gives a good snapshot of which athletes are really good at selling stuff through their Twitter feeds.

Ranking is decided by which athletes were able to drive the most visits to brands' sites, videos and applications. Ad.ly pays on a sliding scale based on performance by their stable of their famous tweeters. The celebrities whose fans will click on their messages stand to make a lot more money than those who can't drive action. In this case fan loyalty actually translates into a viable monthly revenue stream for these celebrities.

Regardless of how the rankings were compiled, Dockett finished as the ninth most influential athlete on Twitter behind names like Paul Pierce, Lamar Odom, and Nick Swisher among others.

The honor was probably because of tweets like this one posted on Thursday.